Everything I know about keeping a gun alive, knowing what it's worth, fixing what you safely can, and using it well after sixty. Twenty-eight chapters, 442 pages, more than two hundred guns. Most readers find one thing in the first chapter that pays for the book.
442 pages of what one old gunsmith knows, written down while he can still write it. Every chapter runs the same shape: a story from the bench, the how with the numbers in it, and one box of Bench Notes at the end with the handful of things to remember. Read it on any phone, tablet, or computer, or print the pages you want and read them in your chair.
A Lifetime with Guns, Written Down · Ivan's Journal, Volume I
Care, collecting, repair, home defense, and the two hundred guns worth knowing, in one plain book.
A safe loses money two ways. You pay too much for guns going in, and you let them go too cheap coming out, with rust and useless products in between. Here's a year on guesswork, and the same year once you know better.
Where each line lives in the book: Chapters 5, 4, 2, 13, and 22, in that order.
These are examples, not a promise. Every safe is different. The point holds: knowing what you've got pays for itself fast.
Twenty-eight chapters in seven sections, plus seven appendices at the back. Here's the map, section by section, with a few of the things each one settles.
Where every good habit starts.
Cleaning, oil, rust, wood, and the long sleep in the safe.
The years to avoid, the guns worth a fortune, and how to deal.
How they work, and the rifles, shotguns, handguns, and old soldiers in your safe.
What you can fix, and what you hand to a gunsmith.
Ammunition, the over-60 shooter, home defense, carry, the field, the extras.
Teaching the young, what your grandfather knew, and what to buy.
Seven references at the back of the book, and you can print any page at home.
Rendered from the PDF you'd get, not mocked up. A chart from the back, a warning box, a page of plain teaching, and a story. Read them the way you'd flip a book open before paying for it.
I spent the better part of fifty years with a gun in my hands and a screwdriver on my bench. I ran a gunsmith shop for most of them and closed it when my hands and my eyes said it was time. These days the bench is in my garage, I teach my granddaughter to shoot, and I talk about guns on the Ivan's Journal channel. This book is everything I know, written down plain, before it goes in the ground with me.
I learned the trade under an old gunsmith named Kessler, and my first shop was a corner of my father's garage. My grandfather was a county deputy who wiped his guns down every evening on a square of newspaper at the kitchen table. I taught my granddaughter Nell to shoot at eight. I keep a farm, I belong to a gun club, and my customers now are family, neighbors, and the fellows at the club.
The channel is where I talk. The book is where it's all written down, in order, with the numbers in it, for whoever pulls up a stool next.
Check out, and the book is in your email within a minute. It's a PDF you read on any phone, tablet, or computer, and you can print any page at home. Nothing ships, and there's nothing to cancel later. If it doesn't earn its keep in a week, email me and every penny comes back, and you keep the book.
A Lifetime with Guns, Written Down · Ivan's Journal, Volume I
You shouldn't, yet. Read the sample pages on this page. If they sound like a man who knows what he's talking about, the book is 442 more of them.
It's a digital book you read on a phone, tablet, or computer, and you can print any page you like at home. You get it the minute you check out.
If you can open an email, you can read this. One link, one click, and you can print it to read in your chair.
Most of it is written for exactly that reader: the forgotten parts and the why behind the how. If you truly know it all, the refund is right there.
No. It's fifty years at a bench, told plain, including the parts the internet gets wrong.
It names more than two hundred, and the chapters on how guns work and how they fail apply to every one of them.
Email within 7 days and you get every penny back, and you keep the book. No forms, no questions.
Fifty years at the bench, set down plain, for you and for whoever you pass your guns to. It's $27 today, in your email within a minute, and you've got a week to decide with the whole book in your hands.
Get the book · $27